Winter Guide 2013: The Nearest Mountain

Our mountain-bike scene sorta sucks. The Lumberyard helps.

People move to Portland with high expectations for all
things outdoors. Ask Will Heiberg. A decade ago, Heiberg, now 44, moved
here from Washington, D.C., expecting the best of Western life. Mostly,
it worked out. Except when it came to his hobby of mountain biking.

“It’s
got this amazing reputation for being a great bicycle city, but for
recreation there are these huge holes,” he says. “People continually
move here and they get on the bicycle message boards and they’re like,
‘I just got to Portland, where’s the great mountain biking?’ and it’s
like, if you’re looking for mountain biking, better move somewhere
else.”

The problem, in
short: Portland is too far from the closest Cascades trails that offer
bikers a thrill. And most of the hilly parks we do have, like the trails
that crisscross Forest Park, are closed to cyclists.

“It takes an hour and
change to get to what I’d call really good single track,” he says. “And
in the winter it’s wet and it’s dark—you have to be pretty hardcore.”

Heiberg made a solution: a 42,000- square-foot
indoor mountain-bike park built in a converted bowling alley on
Northeast 82nd Avenue. The park is called the Lumberyard, and it
features jumps, pump tracks, a half-pipe and winding single-track trails
that mimic what trail riders see out in the wild. On a rainy Sunday,
the Lumberyard is pumping, hopping and spinning with riders, some of
whom would probably be home playing video games, or watching the
football game currently occupying a few scattered parents sitting in the
Lumberyard’s bar area.

Like so many inspired
ideas, it came from Cleveland. That’s where Ray’s MTB Indoor Park
opened in 2004. Having read about the then-novel indoor park, which has
since inspired a half-dozen imitators across the continent, Heiberg flew
out to ride the place himself.

“It’s
an old warehouse next to a housing development that doesn’t look like
it’s doing too well, which is a lot of housing developments in
Cleveland,” he says. “I went there for the weekend, and on the way back I
thought, ‘I have to do this in Portland.’”

It
took Heiberg, who wears a graying beard, glasses and a
Lumberyard-branded flannel shirt, some time to put the pieces in place.
In the meantime, he got more involved in the local mountain-bike scene,
advocating for the new pump track in East Portland, and continued
working at Liquid Development, a local company that worked on video
games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Eventually, he found
the right space and used his video-game design skills to create a
three-dimensional map of the space he hoped to open there.

“We pretty much made a video-game level of what the space was going to look like,” Heiberg says. “So we got the most out of it.”

The
Lumberyard’s rental bikes have big, knobby tires with no gears, a back
brake and a seat that’s not made for sitting. “It’s a very simple tool.
It’s a big version of a kid’s BMX bike,” Heiberg says. “But it’s what
you need to practice your skills. And you can do the same thing over and
over until you get it right without having to get off and hike back up
the hill and try the trick again.”

So
far, the Lumberyard has been embraced warmly by the Pacific Northwest
mountain-bike scene, regularly seeing riders stop by from as far away as
Vancouver, B.C., and winning over parents who want to get their kids
out of skate parks, which can sometimes draw a tougher crowd.

“As a parent, I don’t
like to go someplace where I have to explain, ‘No, those aren’t words
we use,’ and ‘No, those are not cigarettes they’re smoking,’” Heiberg
says.

“As a kid, my BMX
bike was my ticket to freedom—we’d go out and do what we wanted to do,”
he says. “I don’t really want my kids sitting on the couch all the time
playing video games; I want them out experiencing the world.”

The
scenes at the Lumberyard are decidedly mixed. Little kids barely off
their training wheels roll around the easy track, marked green using the
international system for ski runs, while guys in their 20s and 30s
practice spins on the blue course and master the art of rolling around
the 60-degree turn that’s part of one track without having to pedal. In
the basement, guys who look like they were old enough to have bought the
first Beastie Boys album on vinyl, roll slowly around practicing
balancing tricks accompanied by a soundtrack of ’80s music.

In addition to
hardcore riders getting their fix in a warm, dry space, Heiberg also
sees a lot of newbies not ready to commit to an expensive bike rental
and a long drive out to the sticks.

“For the price of a
rental at a bike shop, you can get a whole day here and not have to
worry about anything,” Heiberg says. “It’s very easy to dip your foot
into the pool—it’s a zero-entry pool.”

In addition to those
advantages—and the gear and repair shop that will assure no day is
wasted by minor mechanical malfunction—there’s also a tavern with pizza,
smoked brisket, burgers and local craft beer on tap.